Red Pottage eBook

“I never heard it till this instant. That
quite accounts for his views. He wants to push
his own wines. Of course, drunkenness is working
for his interests. I understand it all now.
He has undone the work of years by that speech for
the sake of booking a few orders. It is contemptible.
I trust, Hester, he is not a particular friend of yours,
for I shall feel it my duty to speak very strongly
to him if he comes again.”

But Dick did not appear again. He was off and
away before the terrors of the Church could be brought
to bear on him.

But his memory remained green at Warpington.

“They do say,” said Abel to Hester a few
days later, planting his spade on the ground, and
slowly scraping off upon it the clay from his nailed
boots, “as that Muster Vernon gave ’em
a dusting in the school-yard as they won’t forget
in a hurry. He said he could not speak out before
the women folk, but he was noways nesh to pick his
words onst he was outside. Barnes said as his
tongue ’ud ’ave raised blisters on a hedge
stake. But he had a way with him for all that.
There was a deal of talk about him at market last
Wednesday, and Jones and Peg is just silly to go back
to Australy with ’im. I ain’t sure,”
continued Abel, closing the conversation by a vigorous
thrust of his spade into the earth, “as one
of the things that fetched ’em all most wasn’t
his saying that since he’s been in a hot climate
he knowed what it was to be tempted himself when he
was a bit down on his luck or a bit up. Pratts
would never have owned to that.” The village
always spoke of Mr. Pratt in the plural without a
prefix. “I’ve been to a sight of temperance
meetings, because,” with indulgence, “master
likes it, tho’ I always has my glass, as is
natural. But I never heard one of the speakers
kind of settle to it like that. That’s
what the folks say; that for all he was a born gentleman
he spoke to ’em as man to man, not as if we was
servants or childer.”

CHAPTER XIX

“And so you cannot persuade Miss Gresley to
come to us next week?” said Lord Newhaven, strolling
into the dining-room at Westhope Abbey, where Rachel
and Dick were sitting at a little supper-table laid
for two in front of the high altar. The dining-room
had formerly been the chapel, and the carved stone
altar still remained under the east window.

Lord Newhaven drew up a chair, and Rachel felt vaguely
relieved at his presence. He had a knack of knowing
when to appear and when to efface himself.

“She can’t leave her book,” said
Rachel.

“Her first book was very clever,” said
Lord Newhaven, “and, what was more, it was true.
I hope for her own sake she will outgrow her love of
truth, or it will make deadly enemies for her.”